National Seashore magnet for mushroom mavens

EASTHAM — Guitta Blau might easily have a role in a fairy tale worthy of the Brothers Grimm. In the woods of the Cape Cod National Seashore this week, she carried a woven basket in the crook of her arm, urging her companions to walk faster on the path, as the forest closed in behind them.

Want to know more about mushrooms? Go to the Boston Mycological Club Web site: www.bostonmycologicalclub.org. The club has a mushroom walk scheduled for 1:30 p.m. tomorrow at Bay End Farm, 200 Bour...

» Read more

X

More on mushrooms

Want to know more about mushrooms? Go to the Boston Mycological Club Web site: www.bostonmycologicalclub.org. The club has a mushroom walk scheduled for 1:30 p.m. tomorrow at Bay End Farm, 200 Bournedale Road, Bourne, at the parking area in front of the farm stand. Check the club's Web site for updates and more information.

EASTHAM — Guitta Blau might easily have a role in a fairy tale worthy of the Brothers Grimm.

In the woods of the Cape Cod National Seashore this week, she carried a woven basket in the crook of her arm, urging her companions to walk faster on the path, as the forest closed in behind them. She searched for something magical, something mysterious — those squishy, satiny and sometimes poisonous fungi that grow out of the forest floor. She wandered among the trees. Twigs snapped underfoot. Birds fluttered away.

"Isn't that nice," Blau said of an amanita, a type of mushroom a companion spotted. She pulled out an oyster knife to dig up a specimen. She rubbed away the dirt and tenderly touched the cap and stalk.

"Here's another something or other," she said, stepping over a second mushroom.

It's mushroom-picking season in the Seashore.

Mushrooms are the above-ground "fruit" of a larger fungal system that is typically underground or within decaying wood. They are neither plant nor animal. Instead, they are their own kingdom, fungi. They thrive in the pitch pine and beech forests and near a white cedar swamp in the Seashore, according to a local guide called "Mushrooms of Cape Cod and the National Seashore."

In autumn, mushroom gatherers arrive by the dozens in the Seashore, parking their cars here and there and everywhere and walking up into the woods. Some come from the Boston area on the weekends. Luda Shtern, for instance, a Russian expatriate from Brookline stood by the side of Province Lands Road in Provincetown recently, holding a basket full of mushrooms. She'd walked too far in the woods, she said, and needed a ride back to her car.

Shtern gathers mushrooms for relaxation and because they're a source of protein. She fries them with onions and potatoes, and eats them with sour cream.

"It's our national occupation in the fall," Shtern said of her Russian heritage. "Instead of killing animals, we just look for mushrooms. It's number one."

Others who live locally, like Blau, avoid the weekend rush by foraging mid-week. Blau usually hunts for mushrooms near the Salt Pond Visitor Center in Eastham or near her house in South Wellfleet.

During the walk at the visitor center, the mushrooms appeared as white flat-tops on fat stalks, smelling of raw potatoes and glimmering in the sunlight. One was a yellow pin cushion. Another was as slender as a daisy — with a tiny brown dome for a head. Another cluster looked like miniature-sized huts, rounded and thatch-roofed. Another big mushroom — on a tree root — was like a deep purple rose, split open, rotting and velvety.

Think of mushroom collecting as you would wildflowers or birds, Blau said Thursday in the woods behind the visitor center. Avid mushroom collectors have tons of books on the subject. They study them and preserve the best specimens. They revel in finding an oddity. They get better and better at locating and identifying the fungi in the forest.

"This is just another aspect of natural life," Blau said. "And sometimes you find something that's good to eat."

She's never eaten a poisonous one, or gotten a high from eating one. "I'm very careful," Blau said. "You have to know the mushroom."

Within the Seashore, anyone can pick mushrooms by hand, up to 5 gallons per day, as long as it's for personal rather than commercial use, said Seashore acting chief ranger Robert Grant.

Generally, mushroom-picking season is July through November, Blau said.